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I recently played against a player with a North Korean flag on Chess.com. I assume they just picked that flag for a laugh or something, but it did get me wondering; have there been any titled North Korean players? If not, have any North Koreans achieved any recognition in chess?

Rewan Demontay
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Ryan_L
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1 Answers1

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I tried searching for players by countries in ratings.fide.com's advanced search feature but i couldn't seem to find the north korea country there

After some research, I found this player: Roza Lallemand which is a french GM from north korea

I don't know if this counts as she is born in North Korea but she is a french player

Chess_Enthusiast
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    "I don't know if this counts as she is born in North Korea but she is a french player" According to that wiki article, she emigrated to the Soviet Union as a child, and was trained to play chess in a school there - and wound up moving to France after she met her husband. – nick012000 Aug 23 '21 at 16:08
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    Kind of funny that her surname after marriage literally means "The German" in French. The NK-born Soviet-French German – llama Aug 23 '21 at 18:53
  • Can you actually pick a country in chess.com? I thought this was geolocated... – postoronnim Aug 24 '21 at 01:00
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    North Koreans have essentially no internet access. There are very few computers accessible for personal use, what few are accessible are only available for powerful people, and even they are behind NK's version of The Great Firewall. I think Chess.com geolocates to pick a default flag, but then allows you to choose. – Ryan_L Aug 26 '21 at 21:17
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    'was a French chess player of North Korean origin who was raised in the Soviet Union' --> wow – BCLC Sep 03 '21 at 00:26
  • Roza was from South Korea, not North Korea. – Kerindor Aug 05 '23 at 06:25
  • @Kerindor Wikipedia says "born in North Korea" though. Are you claiming the reference they cite is wrong? – Federico Poloni Aug 05 '23 at 12:00
  • @FedericoPoloni Wikipedia contradicts itself. In the main text it says "Roza Te was born in North Korea in 1961". In the box on the right hand side under the picture it says "Born Roza Te 8 August 1961 South Korea" Given they emigrated to the Soviet Union I would say North Korea is more likely, but due to the contradiction Wikipedia can't be taken as an authoritative source in this case/ – Ian Bush Aug 05 '23 at 12:51
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    @IanBush Good point. The cited references confirm North Korea though; for instance there's https://deces.matchid.io/search?advanced=true&fuzzy=false&ln=Te&bd=1961&dage=47&size=n_60_n . – Federico Poloni Aug 05 '23 at 12:59
  • @FedericoPoloni as I read it it's actually reference [8] at http://www.echecs.asso.fr/eem/eem95.pdf . In fact the Wikipedia article looks like a translation of this in parts. – Ian Bush Aug 05 '23 at 12:59
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    @IanBush I have edited Wikipedia to fix the mistake. – Federico Poloni Aug 05 '23 at 19:02